Quote from: Will;799952My reductionist side would want unarmed combat to be folded into regular fighterly stuff.

So you have fighters who mostly do weapons, fighters who mix a bit, and fighters who specialize in unarmed.

And then classical monks would be ... eldritch knights. Think about it! (maybe with cleric list instead of wizard)

the monk as a Divine EK actually makes a lot of sense.

Quote from: tenbones;799987Yes and no.

By Yes - it's definitely a "an Asian" concept.

By No - It's not a mandatory thing. I'm just talking out loud and getting some concensus by those interested (including you) . And I'm doing this out of my own personal interest because I'm working on something relating to it (which of course I'll share).


However! as an abstraction its a great way to create further distinction (in my opinion) with a direct mechanical benefit other than "because I said so." We're not just talking about realism - we're talking about fantasy martial arts. So where Boxing is clearly a "Hard Style" - vs. Will Fu and his Fireball Taichi, whose flowing movements and evasion skills make him hard to hit, is a "Soft" style... It gives a form of emphasis-fluff that is backed up mechanically (and the downstream effects will further enhance the evolution of your character).

I would like a Martial Art system to make the expression of Martial Arts be something that no-two people do the same but you can base your entire character around OR simply make it an affectation as a part of your background and it be useful.

I can dig it. I can see a much more meaningful distinction between arts being mundane, but still intentionally exceeding human limitations, and mystical/magical, like shooting ki balls at higher levels (although that could be modeled with cantrips too).

Quote from: jibbajibba;800021I think its a useful descriptor. Boxing is a hard style for sure.

Ok, but why should something that is meant to encompass European Martial Arts as well as Martial Arts from all over the world, or a magical facsimile thereof, be beholden to a specifically "Asian" conception of some arts?
And how do you propose other arts get categorized if a MA module did use hard, soft, and hybrid? Is the ernstfecten of the earlier Geselschaft Liechtenauers a hard or soft style? Is it different from the schulfechten of Meyer? Are we going to drill down to the subsections of arts that contain several ranges and modes of fighting? Is ringen hard or soft? Is it the same as the ringen used in armor?
Or are all war arts going to be unilaterally declared "hard" as well?
Is there even going to be a meaningful mechanical difference between hard and soft?
This might just be my reflexive distaste of using martial terminology

Quote from: Saladman;799439My own ideal fix would be to consolidate the fighter and monk classes (or concepts).  The split's arbitrary to begin with:  it took martial weapons being outlawed to peasantry in the east to drive a focus on empty-handed techniques, firearms cutting short the western martial art traditions, a deliberate effort in the 19th and early 20th century to turn asian martial arts into sports to keep them alive, and finally a strong dose of David Carradine to arrive at the D&D concept of a purely open-handed, unarmored warrior.

Real, period fighting monks wore armor and carried weapons, just like real, period knights used strikes and arm bars along with their swords.

So, yes, pankration is good to know about, as are the modern reconstructions of medieval swordsmanship.  It still doesn't get me to the point of a guy who goes up against a sword unarmored and empty handed by preference, or who knows how to take a sword away from someone but never learned how a sword is wielded (disarm bonus but not proficient in some editions of D&D).

I started doing it that way years ago -and for the same reasons. Unarmed combat in my campaign is simply another weapon skill that PCs can take instead of the usual ones. Fighters can specialize or double-specialize if they have the slots for it.

Going into detail about boxing vs wrestling vs pankration vs karate is pointless bullshit like detailing different fencing styles.

Quote from: jibbajibba;799679entirely replace the monk.

Monks become fighters who specialise in unarmed combat (or weapon styles which you coudl build in a simialr way)

Correct answer.

Quote from: AxesnOrcs;800024Ok, but why should something that is meant to encompass European Martial Arts as well as Martial Arts from all over the world, or a magical facsimile thereof, be beholden to a specifically "Asian" conception of some arts?
And how do you propose other arts get categorized if a MA module did use hard, soft, and hybrid? Is the ernstfecten of the earlier Geselschaft Liechtenauers a hard or soft style? Is it different from the schulfechten of Meyer? Are we going to drill down to the subsections of arts that contain several ranges and modes of fighting? Is ringen hard or soft? Is it the same as the ringen used in armor?
Or are all war arts going to be unilaterally declared "hard" as well?
Is there even going to be a meaningful mechanical difference between hard and soft?
This might just be my reflexive distaste of using martial terminology

Yeah! There would/should/ought to be some mechanical difference. What I think we shouldn't do is get caught up in the East/West bullshit jackoff contest.

Look at it like this: Hard Styles are aggressive and try to "bury it to the elbow". No one should give a fuck if it's called Boxing/Karate/Twat-fu. It's a name. If it's analogous to some real martial art -great. If not, great.

Soft Styles emphasize movement and flexibility and avoiding attacks. So they'd get an AC bonus.

Hybrid styles that emphasize neither would get either nothing, or maybe Initiative. They might have more manuevers from each class.

Real world martial arts would only be relevant in the sense that it's a "base concept". Clearly a 15th level pseudo-Japanese monk isn't using Karate to split a boulder in half, right? So we should leave "realism" at the level of "flavor".

The key here, imo, is to not make martial arts "samey" - where you get a class that stands in for all martial arts. That's precisely the problem of the Monk vs. the Fighter. Hell, there's no reason a Thief couldn't be an Unarmed specialist. Why not? I do believe these distinctions should exist but within a larger framework that leverage established mechanics - with some deviations.

Those deviations are what I'm talking about mostly. Things like Hard/Soft, Weapon/Strike/Grapple - etc. These are features that need to be paid for - or nested into Archetype.

As an aside, I'd just like to say I really appreciate the productive tone most of this thread has had.

I love to kibbitz about game stuff.

Quote from: jibbajibba;799925Yet Muay Thai and Brazilian Jujitsu have come to dominate MMA/UFC almost entirely.

Indeed it has, and in the stylized world of MMA, with pristine mats, well-lit arenas, short matches with 5 minute rounds, tap-outs/submissions, and no lethal strikes or eye-gouging, those are styles which work.

Now if your gameplay exclusively involves dojos and competition bouts, then your comment makes a shred of sense.

Quote from: tenbones;800060..."bury it to the elbow"..."Twat-Fu"...

Those two phrases really didn't need to be in adjacent sentences. :eek:

Quote from: tenbones;800060Yeah! There would/should/ought to be some mechanical difference. What I think we shouldn't do is get caught up in the East/West bullshit jackoff contest.

Look at it like this: Hard Styles are aggressive and try to "bury it to the elbow". No one should give a fuck if it's called Boxing/Karate/Twat-fu. It's a name. If it's analogous to some real martial art -great. If not, great.

Soft Styles emphasize movement and flexibility and avoiding attacks. So they'd get an AC bonus.

Hybrid styles that emphasize neither would get either nothing, or maybe Initiative. They might have more manuevers from each class.

Real world martial arts would only be relevant in the sense that it's a "base concept". Clearly a 15th level pseudo-Japanese monk isn't using Karate to split a boulder in half, right? So we should leave "realism" at the level of "flavor".

The key here, imo, is to not make martial arts "samey" - where you get a class that stands in for all martial arts. That's precisely the problem of the Monk vs. the Fighter. Hell, there's no reason a Thief couldn't be an Unarmed specialist. Why not? I do believe these distinctions should exist but within a larger framework that leverage established mechanics - with some deviations.

Those deviations are what I'm talking about mostly. Things like Hard/Soft, Weapon/Strike/Grapple - etc. These are features that need to be paid for - or nested into Archetype.

Agree with all of this.

Actual styles only matter in so much as you should be able to model then through the system.

Hard and Soft have genuine mechanical and kinetic differences.

I find myself harking back to OA again.
If you have a system that enabels you to build martial arts for your setting from a range of choices, hard/soft, grapple/strike etc. with a list of related "feat" type tricks in a pyramid. You can then allow anyone to take a martial art as a "Weapon Proficiency" in old money or as a Combat style in 5e parlance.

Either more proficencies or some other flag in 5e would then be used to gain the feat like abilities. WPs were ideal as the fighter gets more so specialist fighter martial artists were going to be better than rogues or wizards because of the way the system is built which is exactly how you want it to work.

Quote from: Ravenswing;800063Indeed it has, and in the stylized world of MMA, with pristine mats, well-lit arenas, short matches with 5 minute rounds, tap-outs/submissions, and no lethal strikes or eye-gouging, those are styles which work.

Now if your gameplay exclusively involves dojos and competition bouts, then your comment makes a shred of sense.

I agree that there are a small number of lethal techniques available to small number of martial arts but the reality is those things rarely get used in actual fights. For Actual fights outside in a dark street with last man standing rules and poor footing and all that I would take Muay Thai and a grapling style like jujitsu or aikido above almost anything else.

Krav Maga was sited. Its really a meta art like Hiken Kempo (to Karate) or JKD (to "kung fu") as its made up of a load of other traditional styles all kludged together and stripped of the mysticism. All three of these are very effective and KM has the advantage of flexing in plenty of Muay Thai and western arts like savate and boxing as well.  Its hard to say stuff is based on KM when KM itself is based on so much stuff.

The one key thing that is being missed here is "scrappiness". Which is to say that some people are pyschotic bastards who will fuck you up and some people aren't. Very few games actually differentiate. FGU used to do it in their traits with esthetic, mechanical, scientific, combative etc but in reality it was a tiny proportion of the overall skill value compared to stats and training.
In reality its the most important thing.
If you haven't ever looked at a guy (or girl though rarer) and realised that it doesn't matter how much more training you have had than them they would entirely and totally fuck up your day just because... then you won't entirely understand me but "scrapiness/belicosity" should be the main stat for determining combat effectiveness.  Just like esthetics should be what determines how well you paint rather than dexterity  etc.

I have always avoided anything more than the most passing glance at martial arts in rpgs simply because I never find an approach that is satisfying.

I think this is one of those fields that I tend to overthink. Like how do you balance out the fact that in an unarmed encounter a grappler has an advantage over an opponent that studies a striking based art?

Also what about damage? Most times the damage being done isn't lethal, certainly incapacitating but not lethal most times. What about encounters between an armed opponent and an unarmed martial artist? The armed one has a large advantage here.

Quote from: jibbajibba;800068I find myself harking back to OA again.
If you have a system that enabels you to build martial arts for your setting from a range of choices, hard/soft, grapple/strike etc. with a list of related "feat" type tricks in a pyramid. You can then allow anyone to take a martial art as a "Weapon Proficiency" in old money or as a Combat style in 5e parlance.

Either more proficencies or some other flag in 5e would then be used to gain the feat like abilities. WPs were ideal as the fighter gets more so specialist fighter martial artists were going to be better than rogues or wizards because of the way the system is built which is exactly how you want it to work.

I was up late last night... and this thread was on my mind. And a couple of things kinda jumped out at me.

1) The "currency" system of how to pay for all these nifty ideas. There is one big umbrella from the outset that allows for this - Archetypes. The "problem" with Archetypes is that they're more comprehensive and larger in scope than what a Martial Art is supposed to represent. So to me this crystallizes the idea that many here have proffered for where you roll some of the Monk abilities into the Fighter class concept as a "Martial Artist".

The CATCH here is I would like to make *any* class have access to Martial Arts (much like OA). So here's the "thing" - Why can't you have universal Archetypes? Why not just make Archetypes that are not class-specific? Think about it - it gives us a chance to mine a *lot* of good ideas and marry them to mechanics that will allow any GM to indulge in their snowflakey ideas.

The beauty of this concept is that an Archetype is much easier to backwards engineer than say a class in terms of "balance" (to what degree you care) - and leverages a *lot* of what 5e has to offer without re-writing the core of the design and should be pretty conservative on bloat-factor while getting to the essence of what we're trying to do.

2) The side-effect of this idea is that it still does not *require* a character to have Martial Artist Archetype to pick up and learn Martial Arts - since those would be rolled into the Feat System.

Sub-Systems - Okay so this is all well and good. So the system itself will require a Feat. But outside of the baked-in Archetype abilities - how do we pay for the maneuvers?

One consideration is you don't introduce *any* new kind of mechanical currency at all. We could treat maneuvers as Tools. Which only requires Time and Money (friend*) and that would be based on roleplaying and GM call. This would drive a lot of noobs crazy that want a chart to outline exactly how they can spend a point to get Iron-fist Strike or whatever - but it's an elegant solution.

Another possibility is that instead of using the dry Time/Money factor that we make these maneuvers have an in-game requirement to achieve it. Think Ironfist from Marvel Comics - he had to dip his fists into the heart of a dragon's blood from its heart. Now this is rather extreme example, but it's an illustration of creating a quest-driven notion to learn these effects. Of course it introduces a soft-scaling factor that can allow for some *really* crazy possibilities and it would be purely optional to what degree a GM wants them in their game. Essentially we'd be allowing Skills to be included into the for Tool proficiency rule. Another elegant solution, though not necessarily a perfect one for some GM's.

LOL, 'Downtime' actions might be "Martial Arts Montage" to pick up maneuvers as the GM allows. /queue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBktYJsJq-E

Last possibility is an actual currency. Any thoughts?

Quote from: Arkansan;800109I have always avoided anything more than the most passing glance at martial arts in rpgs simply because I never find an approach that is satisfying.

I think this is one of those fields that I tend to overthink. Like how do you balance out the fact that in an unarmed encounter a grappler has an advantage over an opponent that studies a striking based art?

Yeah you're overthinking a few things here. I have to explain this to my own players who have the *exact* same concerns.

You can offset the Grappler/Striker issue by including maneuvers that actually afford the Striker some protection from the attempt, but with the caveat that under no circumstances is a Striker supposed to outclass a Grappler in Grappling - with the same in reverse. It could be as simple as a Front Kick maneuver that pushes anyone trying to enter the same space as a Striker back 5-feet as a Reaction (which might be resisted). Or something like that. This does not negate the inherent Grappler's ability, rather it emphasizes a Striker's ability to do what a Striker does best.

Likewise - a Grappler might have access to a maneuver called "Shoot" - and it gives them a resisted chance to gain a bonus to initiate a Grapple as a Bonus Action after someone tries and fails to take an action against him. Like a Grappling Riposte (though as a wrestler I'll tell you this isn't 100% an accurate abstraction - It's not inaccurate either)- so you try your Front Kick - and succeed and push me back, I get to immediately try another attempt.

PC's that stack deeply into these "What If" scenarios invariably hamstring their utilitarian potential in order to hyper-specialize. If that's the way you wanna go. Have at it.

Quote from: Arkansan;800109Also what about damage? Most times the damage being done isn't lethal, certainly incapacitating but not lethal most times. What about encounters between an armed opponent and an unarmed martial artist? The armed one has a large advantage here.

Damage in 5e is Lethal/Non-lethal at the discretion of the PC. Armed/Unarmed is irrelevant considering Monks deal pretty blistering damage with their fist as an abstraction of *what*? Ki? Magic? The idea is that "realism" is a tiny grain of salt we assume with "Fantasy Martial Arts".

Yeah I figured I was over thinking it. Honestly my players have never been interested in martial arts in any of my campaigns so I haven't had much incentive to stop and look at ways of abstraction and mechanical solutions to my concerns. Though this thread is making me think about trying to integrate martial arts into my upcoming 5e campaign.

One of the biggest complaints you see in the modern era of D&D (which I consider 3.x to 4e) is this persistent idea that melee characters are justifiably less useful than spell-casters. Having always included martial arts (fantasy and real-life analogs) in my campaigns since 1e - I've always inoculated my games a bit from that issue by these means.

Now that doesn't mean all my games are Wire-Fu with Achilles and his spear/shield running across smoke and killing thousands. It has to be moderated to the conceits of your gameworld and what everyone is cool with.

I find that most people who disdain the use of martial-arts in their games fall into the endless circle-jerk of East/West styles, realism vs. wire-fu antics. This is all easily swept aside with a simple conceit that D&D is Fantasy - so realism is just an ingredient like anything else.

Pirates of the Caribbean is a Martial Arts film, so is Lord of the Rings - the only difference is that instead of katana and slanted eyes, it's pointed ears and bows and arrows and rapiers.

The degree of realism you want in your game is on you as the GM. If done judiciously - martial-arts in your game can seriously make your non-casting characters become far more than they ever thought and REALLY elevate the game.

I wrote a lot of the martial arts articles for Dragon Magazine in 3e (real world and "fantasy" racial ones). I also recommend looking at Swashbuckling Adventures (d20 7th Sea) - where their tight little 5-level PrC's were packed with high-powered melee concepts. I laugh at people who screamed how overpowered they were, when all they did was fully realize a martial concept... vs. the sheer power of a Mage/Sorcerer/Cleric - who could easily still overpower those aforementioned classes.

I think people's reticence to let non-casters be *more* dangerous has been a flaw in D&D since 3e landed. 1e and 2e were much better for it...